The staff of Dome of Glass, supported by a vast army of lawyers, statisticians, aromatherapists, and Occupy Peterborough activists has initiated an investigation of claims broadcast on television and various other mind-numbing media by the country’s leading business, governmental, and charitable organizations.
    Now, after several days and nights of blood, toil, tears, sweat, and absinthe, Dome of Glass is issuing some preliminary results.

Conclusion

Note: Repairs to the test vehicle came to several times the vehicle’s Blue Book value.

DOES THE EVEREADY BUNNY JUST KEEP GOING AND GOING?

* * *

    A number of other famous slogans are currently under investigation.

    "A mind is a terrible thing to waste" (United Negro College Fund). Several African-American multimillionaires, among them Terrell Owens, Dennis Rodman, Plaxico Burress, and Barack Obama, have been texted with the multiple-choice question:
    Do you believe a mind is a terrible thing to waste?
        (a) Absolutely
        (b) Your guess is as good as mine
        (c) Fuck off man
        (d) Would you mind repeating the question?

    "The Breakfast of Champions" (Wheaties). A list of more than 43,000 known losers who participated in the recent spate of Occupy This and That media events is being sifted to see if any eat Wheaties for breakfast.

    "Visa - It's everywhere you want to be" (Visa Credit Card Company). An in-depth study of male high school and college students who have been unsuccessful in "getting lucky" with members of the opposite sex is currently underway. Preliminary results indicate that a Visa card would be the last item they’d want to come across when and if they reach their target..

    "Eight out of ten cats prefer it" (Whiskas Cat Food). This one is proving a tough nut (or cat) to crack since it requires interviews with a random sample of at least 2,500 adult cats in order to arrive at a statistically valid result. I mean it’s tough enough to round up one cat let alone 2,500. And have you ever tried communicating with a cat? You’ll be lucky if you can keep it from ripping your face open or crapping on your living room rug let alone having a fruitful conversation.

Norm Mack, Peterborough, dog@myfairpoint.net

    In a dramatic breakthrough of almost no significance, two of the world’s leading crap scientists ─ one-time fashion model David Hemenway of Harvard University and Israeli smell researcher, Noam Sobel ─ have joined forces in a lavishly-funded, interdisciplinary series of useless studies.
    In his most recent assault on common sense, Prof. Hemenway, (DOG 12/8/2011) proved that crime among Boston’s Black and Hispanic youths was caused by sugary soft drinks. The professor is now working an hour or two a day to determine the comparative CTI (Crime Toxicality Index) of a 12-ounce can of Coca Cola vs. a tall glass of iced tea with four lumps of sugar.
    Smultaneous with Dr. Hemenway’s groundbreaking gibberish, his compeer in nonsensical research, Prof. Sobel (DOG 2/8/2011), world-unrenowned neurobiologist with the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, discovered that an epidemic of erectile dysfunction among Jewish males (and the consequent low reproductive rate of non-Hasidic Jews) was not, as many had speculated, due to the bitchiness of Jewish females, but rather to the aroma of the tears secreted by said bitchy Jewish females. Prof. Sobel’s team is currently engaged in correlating the TOM (Turn-Off Magnitude) of Hebraic female tears with the position of the female subjects in their menstrual cycles.

* * *

    The new, massively ludicrous effort to be headed by the two savants along with their dedicated and unpaid staffs of young, attractive, coed graduate students is aimed at solving almost all of the world’s deepest and most trivial mysteries.
    Negotiations among Prof. Sobel’s mother, Bella Abzug, Prof. Hemenway’s agent, Scott Boras, and President Obama’s science czar, Al Sharpton, are nearing completion on the 10-year, $795 million exercise in pseudo-science.
    In preparation, Dr. Hemenway has purchased a seven million dollar Key Biscayne research facility with five bedrooms, eight bathrooms, and a seagoing yacht for himself, his family, and Damian, his belovéd Weimaraner attack dog.
    No less farsighted, Dr. Sobel has transferred his stocks, bonds, jewelry, and cash to a Swiss bank in the event that Iran goes nuclear.
    Here’s a roster of some of the more significant problems with which the two men will be grappling:

    Although there was some initial disagreement between the two distinguished phonies as to the make-up of the sample populations to be interviewed, they reached a good-natured compromise over martinis and kreplach during a Harvard Club tête-à-tête in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
    Dr. Hemenway will present his in-depth questionnaires to the few surviving members of the 1,878 Boston inner city youths whose carbonated soda intake he recently probed.
    Dr. Sobel has agreed to conduct his research at various locales in the Caribbean and South Pacific where large numbers of young, nubile, scantily-clad Israeli chicks are known to vacation.

Norm Mack, Peterborough, dog@myfairpoint.net

    Forget about ridiculous crap like whether Candidate A dodged the draft 40 years ago or whether Candidate B is a Mormon or whether Candidate C has been divorced and remarried or whether Candidate D smoked pot in Middle School in the 1960s or whether Candidate E changed his position on abortion rights or whether Candidate F was brain-washed into adopting a Chinese child.
    There is but one overriding consideration when selecting a Republican candidate from the six-man sampler box ─ Can he defeat the current Jackass in Chief.
    In that regard, Mitt Romney easily comes out on top. He’s the country’s best hope for getting rid of the weak, lazy, stupid, immature, irresponsible, asshole who currently naps in the White House between vacations, parties, golf dates, and fund raisers.
    Here’s a snapshot of the five non-Romneys in the race:

    In a normal election cycle it might make sense to judge candidates on the basis of their stands on various more or less significant issues of the day ─ the size of the military, the national debt, social security reform, health care reform, abortion rights, gay rights, job creation, tax reform, and so on.
    In the upcoming general election these concerns fade into inconsequence when stacked up against the one great concern ─ getting rid of Barack Obama ─ a man disastrously unfit for the job that a feckless electorate voted him into three years ago, a man who is, without doubt, the most Incompetent chief executive in the country’s history (and with Jimmy Carter still fresh in memory, that’s quite an achievement).
    So "Issues" be damned.
    Issues emerge on the Eastern horizon like vast images out of Spiritus Mundi only to melt and vanish a year or two later like the snows of yesteryear. On the long Interstate Highway of history, the seemingly burning questions of today will become nothing more than footnotes that no one reads in some pedant’s college text gathering dust in the stacks of the New York Public Library.
    Remember the Alamo? You mean the auto rental agency? How about the Maine? The main what?
    Nobody gives a shit anymore about Santa Ana and Davy Crockett and William Randoph Hearst, about whether we’re going to "Crucify mankind upon a cross of gold," about "54-40 or Fight," about School Busing, about "Manifest Destiny," about "Seward’s Folly," about the Missouri Compromise, about the Smoot-Hawley Act, about César Chavez and his table grapes.
    This is not an election about issues ─ Should we attack Iran? Should we pull out of Afghanistan? Should Roe vs. Wade be overturned? Should Gays get Married? Should we repeal Obamacare?
    It is an election about getting rid of an utterly Incompetent chief executive and replacing him with a man with strength, an open mind, a moral compass, and, above all, Competence..
    Mitt Romney, by his demeanor, his personality, his track record in business and government, and his performance in the furnace of TV debates, has shown that he meets these criteria.

* * *

    Will Mitt be an exciting president?
    God, I hope not.
    Will he drastically alter the status quo, set the nation on dramatic new paths, establish American suzerainty over the nations of the world, eliminate income differentials, resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, rehabilitate Charlie Sheen, end unemployment, cut taxes, balance the budget, cure cancer, rein in Communist China, make us energy independent, eliminate greenhouse gases, resuscitate the housing industry, bring universal peace to the world, reform the United Nations, solve the immigration problem, win the war on drugs, make Mexico the 51st state?
    Afraid not.
    Such accomplishments are the preserve of charismatic shamans and mystical wonder workers, of glittering godlings, of the Kwisatz Haderach (Barack Obama) and his consort, the Bene Gesserit Mother (Michelle), mistress of the weirding ways.

* * *

    So what’ll it be America?
    Four more years of proxy government controlled by the string-pullers of a marionette president?
    Or a return to government based on the boring realities of pragmatism, common sense, good management, and competence?

Norm Mack, Peterborough, dog@myfairpoint.net

    Many people, on the surface tolerant and politically correct, when in private and drinking heavily evidence an antipathy bordering on hatred toward lawyers and their corollary brethren such as judges, politicians, used car salesmen, and sneak thieves.
    In defense of the judiciary and the legal profession ─ as well as other dedicated and wealthy members of the criminal class ─ we must bear in mind the wise old chestnut: "It’s a dirty business, but somebody has to do it."
    Although it is not at all obvious why "somebody has to do it," I nevertheless feel that judges and lawyers should be accorded the same consideration and revulsion reserved for those engaged in other unpleasant activities such as undertakers and proctologists.
    Ask yourself ─ where would Jimmy Carter be today if not for his many government-sponsored visits to his favorite colorectal surgeon to have a camera shoved up his ass?
    But regardless of whether or not judges, attorneys, politicians, and Jimmy Carter are essential to the world’s well-being, there is no question that they are often required to make decisions that may have far-reaching and dire implications for humanity yet hinge on the finest and most ridiculous of logical hairs.
    Such was the recent gut-wrenching matter of Hiroyuki Joho’s flying body parts.
    Not since Solomon recommended chopping a baby in half to settle an ownership dispute between two ladies has there been such a tendentious, not to say disgusting, legal issue.
    Here are the facts according to the Chicago Tribune:

    Clearly, the only person in full possession of his or her faculties in the entire sordid affair was Leslie Rosen, Madame Zokhrabov’s lawyer, who used the straightforward English words "creepy" and "stupid" rather than resorting to legal crap such as a certiorari, habeas corpus, amicus curiae, nolo contendere, and nexium.
    Although the names of the distinguished members of the judicial panel have been censored to protect them from reprisal by enraged Korean émigrés, it is my opinion (without any evidence whatsoever) that the bench was influenced by the fact that Lawyer Rosen is what is known in legal circles as "hot." (I have it on no authority, that one panelist, Judge "X," was seen making out with Leslie in the back seat of his Mercedes and that requests by Mr. Joho’s corpse to recuse Judge X in vitro were refused in vino veritas.)



   A Google of  "Leslie Rosen" yielded this clip. Is it any wonder the judges found in favor of her client?

    Because the deceased’s bank account is not yet exhausted and a large portion of his line of credit with Citibank MasterCard remains untapped, there will be a series of appeals right up to and through the Illinois’ Semi-Supreme Court, the Illinois’ Higher Supreme Court, and the Illinois’ Double Secret Supreme Court with justice Rod Blagojevich presiding.
    Should these lower court appeals not produce the desired results, Madame Jeung-Hee Park’s team of ex-KGB agents is prepared to run the case through the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, the United States Supreme Court, the Permanent Court of International Justice in the Hague, and, should all else fail, to Judge Judy herself.
    Since the defendant in the case of Zokhrabov v. Joho’s Entrails is a mutilated corpse, the Joho team has settled on famed dead O. J. Simpson Dream Team lawyer Johnnie Cochran (b. October 2, 1937 – d. March 29, 2005) to act as lead cadaver in the appeals process.
    Mr. Cochran's ghost graciously consented to an interview with Dome of Glass.
    Speaking with the aid of the well-known medium, Madame Defarge of French Revolution fame, Mr. Cochran outlined his plan of action.
    "We gonna focus ourself on the size, velocities, and types of Mistah Joho’s body parts which ‘legedly struck the bitch. Y’ followin’ me?
    "Wuz they goin’ five miles a hour? Ten miles a hour? Fifty miles a hour?
    "Wuz they a cop with a legalized radar gun or some such in th’ vicinity? Y’ followin’ me?
    "Wuz the cop a member of an authorizing minority or wuz he some kinda honky bigot prick that have it in for people of color, like brown or tan or yellow or orange or whatsomever like myself? Y’ followin’ me?
    "An’ ‘nother thin’ ─ Did he give th’ Miranda rights to Mistah Joho’s pieces whilst they wuz still airborne?
    "An’ like even more importantly, jus’ what percentilage of Mistah Joho’s body parts wuz shootin’ an’ zoomin’ ‘bout through th’ air?
    "An ‘nother thin’, like, I mean why dint the dumb bitch duck outta th’ way when a nose or elbow or ass-bone wuz headed her direction?
    "Like if th’ gook’s skullcase an a bunch o’ other attached shit wuz comin towards the cunt, you’d think she’d have the smarts t’ drop flat or leastwise turn her back ‘stead o’ takin’ it full in th’ belly or armpit or whatsomever. Y’ followin’ me?
    "An’ ‘nother thin’.─ how wuz Mistah Joho s’posed to know which, y’know, organs an’ bones and tissues of hisself is gonna be pointin’ theyselves toward Miz Zumbach or ZumZum or Zuckerman or whatsomever the fuck the mo fo be callin’ herself?
    "Y’ followin’ me? Like s’pose it be nuthin’ more than some kinda spongy lung stuff or mebbe some hunks o’ pancras or liver or mebbe th’ guys balls an’ dick unit or somethin’? Won’t do nuthin’ harmful to the ho but maybe squish her titties and mess her up her dress a bit, y’know."
    "Ah mean, mebbe we ‘gree t’ pay the cleanin’ bill, y’know, jus’ to shut the whole fuckin’ jumbalaya down outta court, y’know. But if th’ bitch think she gonna get her Rooski claws into Mistah Joho’s pants pocket which nobody know where the fuck it is anyhow, she got another think comin'.
    "An’ like what ‘bout th’ umbrella? Did it mebbe impinge upon Zabriskie or Zimbum or whatsomever the bitch name be an’ get itself damaged? Them Ko-reens got a claim right there, y’know, for unauthorized damagin’.
    "Like Ah always say, 'If th' 'brella be trash, they gotta pay cash.'
    "Y’ followin’ me?"

Norm Mack, Peterborough, dog@myfairpoint.net

2011 Was Defined by the Words of Charlie Sheen
By Jonah Goldberg

YOU’LL RECALL that 2011 began with the oafish actor Charlie Sheen celebrating his own narcotic and sexual "crapulence" like a victorious gladiator working the crowds. He was egged on by a media with as much decency as the cons on the top tiers of the prison who chant "fresh fish" as the new inmates walk into general pop, their eyes stinging from delousing powder. Sheen succeeded at turning his own debasement into a national pseudo-event by calling the very definition of losing "winning."
    And that’s what 2011 was all about: pretending to be winning while really losing.
    Sheen’s Hollywood compatriots played the same game.
    Kim Kardashian, fresh from the "success" of her sex tape, parlayed her celebrity into a "classy" wedding that netted her millions and 72 days of marital bliss. Poor Lindsay Lohan, meanwhile, merely found victories in reduced jail time.
    Speaking of jail time, former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich started the year by trying to translate his crimes into a lucrative career as a reality-show star and ended it with a prison sentence.
    In January, a deranged madman killed a bunch of people in Arizona and horribly wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. It was a true tragedy, disgustingly exploited by liberals who saw it as the perfect opportunity to demonize political opponents. Against the weight of logic, facts and decency, allegedly serious people claimed that a map on Sarah Palin’s Facebook page inspired the shooter.
    The Tucson tragedy also let Barack Obama deliver perhaps the best speech of his presidency — on the need to tone down the extreme rhetoric on both sides. Alas, when liberals lecture "both sides," they mean, "Everyone who disagrees with me should shut up."
    By summer, Democratic operatives and liberal New York Times columnists alike (a subtle distinction, I know) were decrying Republicans as "hostage takers" (Obama) and "terrorists" (Joe Biden) and the Tea Party as "the Hezbollah faction" of the GOP (NYT columnist Tom Friedman) with nary a peep of protest from the champions of civility.
    Speaking of protest, consider the Occupy Wall Street movement. Not since the Hebrews killed themselves at Masada has there been a group that more obviously won by losing. Of course, the Jews at Masada were freedom fighters battling Roman imperialism. The Occupy Wall Streeters think they’re fighting imperialism when they throw a tantrum about having to pay their debts.
    The Occupy movement’s meager tangible accomplishments (We recycled our own urine!) are inversely correlated with their lavish press coverage. The protesters were named Time magazine’s person of the year. Though in fairness, Time diluted its sycophancy by including the Arab Spring protesters who’ve (so far) ushered in a glorious new era of Islamism in places like Egypt. Winning!
    (Though perhaps not as clear cut a "win" as President Obama’s decision to declare political victory and pull our troops out of Iraq prematurely, so we can lose a war we sacrificed so much to win.)
    Back home, Tea Party politicians who truly won historic midterm election victories are cast as dangerous losers. The Occupiers lost their bongs and yurts to bulldozers in cities across America, but museums around the country are nonetheless desperate to acquire authentic Occupy movement artifacts to commemorate their glorious but unspecified successes. Unfortunately, the tea partiers cannot work the refs of history this way because they clean up their mess after they get together.
    No word if the Smithsonian collected some genuine Occupier scat to be preserved next to the alleged specimens from the Yeti and Sasquatch. Lord knows they left enough behind for others to scoop.
    And so it goes. The economy continued to languish while the President declared victory over a depression that never was and touted himself as the most legislatively successful President ever — with the "possible exceptions" of FDR, LBJ and Lincoln.
    Meanwhile, we are approaching the third year of the long winter Obama once celebrated as a "recovery summer." Its chief selling points are an unemployment rate statistically lowered by more Americans giving up hope of finding a job, and the claim that millions of jobs have been "created or saved." This bogus locution allows Obama to claim every job he doesn’t destroy as a win.
    And let us not forget the Republicans, whose feckless squad of A-Team candidates stayed on the bench for fear of joining the mosh pit of cannibalism the primary has become, setting the stage for a potential loss in 2012 that not even Charlie Sheen will be able to spin as a victory.

Norm Mack, Peterborough, dog@myfairpoint.net

    This story came my way the other day via the E-mail grapevine. It set me thinking:

    In his weekly column, "Woods, Water & Wildlife" in the Manchester Union Leader, John Harrigan occasionally defends the hunting subset of humanity by pointing out the hypocrisy of critics who castigate people that indulge in blood-sports, but themselves dine on steaks, pork chops, and roast turkey; relax on davenports upholstered in fine Italian leather; hold their pants up with cow-hide belts, and stow their credit cards, cosmetics, emergency tampons, and spare change in handbags crafted out of calf-skin.
    In a recent column about tender-hearted folk who are outraged by north country residents hanging their kills in the backyard prior to butchering them, Mr. Harrigan writes:

    On the face of it, John is absolutely right. It’s absurd for passers-by to weep over the slaughter of noble stags or pretty little pheasants when they'll be scarfing down veal roulades or Rock Cornish game hen in the evening.
    So what’s wrong with his argument, if anything?
    Just this: The issue is not what hunters do. It is why they do it.
    Consider the deer hunter.
    Granted...venison steak is a tasty dish that I, on occasion, have ordered in restaurants.
    Granted...there may be a few intrepid gentlemen in Maine and Vermont and New Hampshire who hop on their skimobiles or ATV’s and freeze their balls off in the northern woods each autumn for the sole purpose of stocking their freezers with moose or deer.
    But for a majority of hunters, the activity is a sport. Despite claims to the contrary, it is not, as with primitive peoples, an activity motivated by the harsh realities of survival.
    Moreover, it is hard to believe that coughing up your lottery winnings to the state fish and game authority for a hunting permit; donating a few thousand to Cabela's for rifle, ammo, boots, and camouflage outfit; and paying some local yokel to butcher, process and package the carcass is a cost-effective way to provide nourishment for yourself and your more-or-less loved ones.
    In short, the incentive for nailing prey with a rifle or shotgun or bow and arrow is not necessity or economy, but because it gives pleasure to the hunter analogous to the feeling Albert Pujols gets when he connects for a home run or someone engaged in the act of fucking achieves when he has an orgasm.
    Wolves do not hunt for fun, they hunt to eat. Lions do not hunt for fun, they hunt to eat. Grizzly bears do not hunt for fun, they hunt to eat.
    Men hunt because it’s a kick.
    People employed in the meat and leather goods industries do not get a charge out of slaughtering livestock (and if they do, they’d best be locked up in the loony bin lest they expand their repertory to other species such as puppies, kitty cats, and young ladies). There is no passion or pleasure or challenge involved when stockyard employees slaughter an animal. It’s a bloody, dirty. stinking business, an unpleasant occupation born of mankind’s yen for meat, trouser supports, and snappy shoes.
    I’m aware that there is a large community of jerks who fantasize that a primeval instinct for slaughtering wildlife beats deep within the breasts of true men.
    A famous spokesman for this school of thought, that obnoxious, self-promoting bully Ernest Hemingway, held that the measure of a man was mystically dependant on his ability to blow out the brains of a charging water buffalo or run a sword through the jugular of a tortured, bleeding, exhausted bull.
    Old Papa Ernie wrote lots and lots of macho crap over the years, picking up a Nobel Prize along the way, before employing his shooting skills on a different sort of target ─ himself.
    In similar fashion the hunting clan likes to pretend that freezing one’s nuts off on a tree-platform while waiting for a moose to wander by so that he can blast it to kingdom come with his thousand dollar .308 Win Ruger M77 Hawkeye Sporter is proof of his masculinity and affirmation of some sort of antediluvian Y-chromosome hunting instinct.
    Bullshit.
    All those overweight farts who think that lurking in the brush and plonking some dull-witted herbivore from 100 yards away is an act of machismo don’t have a clue as to what risk, danger, fear, and courage is all about. These assholes belong to the same club as the idiots who inhale Camel cigarettes, eschew seat belts, and then tank up on beer and flaunt their alcohol bravery by philosophizing to nodding fellow morons, "Hey, man, you can get killed crossing the street," or "Listen, man, if the bullet's got your number on it..."
    Yeah. Right.
    Well hey, man, and listen up, man ─ all you Heineken heroes with compound bows and high-powered rifles and pump-action shotguns ─ here’s a challenge. Go to some nearby rock face ─ Rumney, say, or even the little cliff at Pawtuckaway ─ and try one of the sissy climbs ─ Three Pines at the Gunks, for example. One thing, though, do it free ─ no rope, no ‘biners, no pro. I guarantee it’ll give you a real rush, even if you forget to bring an AK47. You might even discover what genuine sport and genuine kick are all about..

Norm Mack, Peterborough, dog@myfairpoint.net

    A post I put up several months ago, "A Litany of Bitches," catalogued everyday vexations that piss off most people. Gripes included such antisocial behavior as neighbors who run their leaf blowers at 7 a.m. Sunday mornings and self-important asses who bellow on cell phones inside supermarkets, Starbucks, and airport waiting areas.
    A discussion of the article during a noisy, semi-drunken Thanksgiving Day caucus among two daughters, one son, and myself soon devolved into an exchange of beefs about infuriating highway behavior.
    It would seem from the passion and quantity of complaints, that the motoring public is responsible for a whole roster of modern-day psychological and physical ailments that afflict my family including dementia, paranoia, coprolalia, agita, erectile dysfunction, incontinence, and the New York Times.
    Here is the cream, as it were, of the rich lode of bitches culled from our Thanksgiving Day debate as well as subsequent discussions with my wife and further conversations with myself.

I HATE...

...Drivers who suddenly brake on narrow two-lane roads to let a pedestrian cross at a non-authorized crossing. I suppose these assholes think they’re performing an act of Christian charity that will ensure their entry into the kingdom of heaven. In fact, it is a dangerous and moronic practice and an invitation to get rear-ended by the car behind.

            

...Drivers, usually in SUVs, minivans, trucks, school buses, or other large vehicles who pull past you on your left at T-intersections, effectively blocking your line of sight and preventing you from making a right turn until they’re out of the way.

...Drivers who speed up when you’re passing them whether deliberately (a few) or unconsciously (most).

...Drivers who blow their horns and turn purple and give you the finger when you spot a red light and slow down to give the light time to turn green and save you (and the car behind) the trouble of braking.

...Drivers who obey the minutiae of every idiotic speed limit which some dumb highway department has posted ─ five mph in the Peterborough dump, 25 mph around the bend at Dublin Lake, 55 mph on the Merritt Parkway, etc., etc., etc. Even in the police states of Massachusetts and Connecticut the cops know those limits are asinine. By the way, have you ever tried driving at five mph? The fucking speedometer doesn’t go that low.

...Drivers who become paralyzed at traffic circles and wait for a truck a quarter-mile away to enter before they dare move in. Some of these creeps actually come to a halt in the circle itself to let another vehicle enter. Amazing there aren’t more crashes.

...Drivers who think it’s clever and daring to get around a traffic jam by using the breakdown lane to pass the herd after which they bull back into the mainstream when the lane runs out. It’s not clever. It’s not daring. It’s just fucking rude.

...Drivers who speed up when you’re trying to merge from the center lane into the exit lane. I suppose they took their driving lessons in New York City.

...Drivers in the High Occupancy Vehicle lane who go slower than the regular traffic. These dorks are the reason HOV lanes are empty most of the time. They ought to do away with HOV lanes. They’re just ridiculous feel-good wastes of concrete. Kinda like those "New Mother" spaces in supermarket parking lots.

...Drivers who function as rolling traffic barricades by lining up two or three or four abreast on Interstates so that no one can pass. I assume they think they’re some kind of self-appointed civilian speed-limit enforcers.

...Drivers in convertibles with the tops down and stupid English-style driving caps on their balding middle-aged pates. These jerks aren’t dangerous or rude or intrusive or careless. They just piss me off on general principles.

            

Norm Mack, Peterborough, dog@myfairpoint.net

    David Hemenway of the Harvard School of Public Health, (as opposed to the Harvard School of Private Health) is stunned (but not rendered speechless) by the results of his recent, well-funded and highly-publicized study of beverage consumption among inner city teens.
    According to the AFP (Agence France-Presse), Prof. Hemenway discovered that the more soft drinks a teenager consumes, the more attacks he launches against classmates, enemies, girlfriends, ho’s, bro’s, relatives, teachers, whitey, and just about anyone unfortunate enough to cross his path.
    "It was shocking to us when we saw how clear the relationship was," the professor said as he mopped sweat from his brow, choked back tears, and blew his nose.
    Hemenway went on to explain that more than 1,875 teenagers (1,878 to be precise), almost all of them African-American, Hispanic, or some sort of admixture, were asked how many carbonated non-diet soft drinks they had consumed in the previous seven days. They were also asked whether they drank alcohol, smoked, carried a weapon or showed violence towards peers, family members and "partners. "
    What emerged, said Hemenway, was strong evidence of "dose response," demonstrating that teenage rapes, muggings, stabbings, shootings, hair pullings, sucker punchings, bitings, burnings, axings, etc. were caused by the excessive consumption of fizzy sodas* much as obesity is caused by overdosing on McDonalds’ French fries, and Congress is caused by too many politicians.
    Even more incredibly phenomenal, Hemenway also unearthed the astonishing fact that crime rates were much higher among inner city youths than among teenagers living in the wealthier suburbs where, presumably, the consumption of sugary carbonated beverages was far lower and the intake of arugala, latte, tofu, and vodka tonics much higher.
    The brand names of the guilty drinks have not yet been released nor has the exact mathematical relationship between soft drink intake and violence. (Preliminary analysis suggests that 3 cans Coke × 2 cans Pepsi + 1/2 can Sprite = 2 statutory rapes + 1/3 of a mugging.)

* * *

    Inspired by Professor Hemenway’s groundbreaking, earthshaking, and mind-boggling research, Dome of Glass has undertaken a battery of similar studies in hopes of obtaining fat grants from the federal government, state government, and forward-looking universities such as Cornell, Harvard, Yale, and Fairleigh Dickinson.
    Here are some early fruits and vegetables of these studies plucked from various trees, bushes, weeds, shrubs, and algae.

● A stunningly amazing NIH- (National Institutes of Health) funded investigation of 3,872 cases of gang-related murders in Chicago in August 2006, found that 99 percent of the homicides involved males and females between the ages of five and 93. A statistical breakdown of the results also uncovered the astounding fact that 22.6 percent of the black male victims had eaten at McDonalds’s or other "fast-food" establishments during the week leading up to their deaths while an even more disturbing 86.7 percent of Hispanic female victims had either shopped at or shoplifted from Walmart during the same period.
● A joint study with the police departments of Jaffrey and Peterborough uncovered the shocking fact that over 63 percent of men and women convicted of DWI in the period between August 3, 1927, and September, 13, 2005, were wearing pants at the time of their arrest while only 22 percent were wearing skirts. (The remainder were either were naked or dressed in culottes except for two men who had their flies open at the time of apprehension and were not included in the statistics.) In another incredible revelation, 79 percent of the trousered group were found to have either boxer shorts or jockey shorts beneath their pants (four respondents had jockey shorts outside their pants) while 36 percent of the skirt contingent were wearing no underwear at all.
● A new study of 6,714 hunting fatalities in Vermont and New Hampshire in the years 1892, 1918, 1975, and 2001 through 2007 found that soft-drink consumption was significantly higher among bow-and-arrow manslaughterers than shotgun and rifle manslaughterers. Moreover, 98 percent of all respondents acknowledged having consumed one or more glasses of water in the one-week period prior to the killing whereas only 87 percent had more than twice the legal limit of alcohol in their blood streams. Although most deaths were attributed by police to mistaken identity (man for moose, wife for deer, grandfather for bear, child for bunny rabbit, pet dog for mother-in-law) it is noteworthy that only five deer, one moose, two bunny rabbits, one mother-in-law, and no bears were bagged in the same period. The study also found that more than 50 percent of the shooters were retired policemen and 97.3 percent of the shootees were in-laws of the shooter.
● In a CBS-New York Times-Dome of Glass study of fatalities and crippling accidents in the 20th and 21st centuries involving people with the surname Kennedy, a startling contrast emerged between Kennedies who had inherited nest eggs of more than $200 million (27 deaths, five murders, 145 fractures, 217 stints in rehab, 17 plane crashes) and Kennedies with annual incomes below $50,000 (two bad hair days and three damaged nail cuticles). Greek-American savant George Stephanopoulos, co-head of the research team, said, "I was stunned to discover this correlation between great wealth and bad luck." When it was pointed out that all of the bad luck originated from Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, Mr. Stephanopoulos said regression analysis had shown it to be a "statistical quirk" which had been discounted by himself and impartial ombudsperson Nancy Pelosi.
● A cross-cultural study by Norm Mack of Peterborough, New Hampshire (which he hopes will soon be funded by UNESCO) has turned up a remarkable correlation between the non-consumption of mashed plantain root and the incidence of traffic accidents among Caucasian grandmothers. In-depth interviews with 58,799 Ugandan and Botswanan grandmothers, all of them regular eaters of mashed plantain root, found not a single fender-bender, head-on crash, or other automobile-connected incident that involved a white woman. In contrast, a survey of Swedish female drivers of similar age, none of whom had eaten any mashed plantain root, showed that blond, white-skinned grandmothers had damaged or obliterated more than 2,700 Volvos during the previous 10-year period. Legislation currently making its way though the Swedish Reichstag will require all fair-haired whitish women of non-child-bearing age to eat at least two 216 mg servings of mashed plantain every day.

* During a Question-and-Answer session following the AFP interview, a New Hampshire malcontent was taken into custody by police on charges of bigotry after asking whether teenagers who smoke, drink, snort cocaine, shoot dope, carry firearms, smoke crack cocaine, beat up girls, rob, and murder might also enjoy a refreshing can of Coke after each rampage.

Norm Mack, Peterborough, dog@myfairpoint.net

                                
                                 This is the ugliest photo I could find of Frank, but the
                                            rest aren't much better. Maybe I should photoshop
                                            one or two. I'll bet Barney would like that, it's his style

    Someone reading Dome of Glass might think that I have some sort of visceral dislike, even hatred, for long-time Massachusetts Democrat Representative Barney Frank.
    Well, if you’re laboring under such a suspicion, this is to let you know that you’re absolutely right.
    I loathe Frank. I loathe his blubbery face. I loathe his immoral behavior. I loathe his attack-dog politics. And I loathe the lies, evasions, viciousness, and moral cowardice that characterize the man.
    By coincidence (this post was already written pre-Thanksgiving) Frank announced on Monday that he will not seek reelection. Of course, if you’re familiar with the behavior of the Massachusetts pimp, he may very well yield to the pleas of his loyal constituency of idiots, fag hags, and congenital Liberals and rise from his silk-lined coffin like Dracula to seek re-election.

* * *

    My detestation of Frank (as opposed to mere revulsion) is nothing new, but was solidified a few months ago when I happened to remote* onto Bill O’Reilly exchanging insults with the Massachusetts brothel operator ** Before I was able to switch channels, I was rendered immobile by the yawning chasm of Frank’s mouth as it ejaculated a torrential sewer of fabrications, half-truths, and spittle concerning, as I recall, the cause of the 2008 housing bubble and the ensuing worldwide economic downturn.
    Amazingly, the Massachusetts gay panderer was able to shout down even O’Reilly, an acknowledged master of the put-down, shut-down, and turn-off as he blamed the catastrophe on Big Banks, Big Oil, Republican Lobbyists, Right-Wing Conservatives, Henry Kissinger, Wall Street Speculators, the Tea Party, George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Southern Baptists, and ─ if memory serves ─ George Washington, the Gabor sisters, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Three Stooges.

    Let’s set the record straight.

    It was Frank, with his motor-mouth, his machinations, and his threats (all wrapped in standard Liberal pita as "help for the poor, the needy, and the blacks") that coerced and duped and bullied presidents and courts and legislators into pursuing the ruinous, irrational fiscal policies that led to the wreckage we see today.
    "I was blinded by ideology," Frank is quoted as having whined before switching back into attack-dog mode and laying the blame for the fiasco on the very financial institutions his racist policies forced into their shotgun wedding with "subprime" mortgagees; i.e., people who could never and would never be able to repay their loans.

    Here's some relevant commentary:

"It was not the banks that created the mortgage crisis. It was, plain and simple, Congress, who forced everybody to go and give mortgages to people who were on the cusp. ...They were the ones who pushed Fannie and Freddie *** to make a bunch of loans that were imprudent, if you will."

October 20, 2010, Syndicated Columnist Tom Sowell,

"You would be hardpressed to find a politician who is less frank than U.S. Rep. Barney Frank. Even in an occupation where truth and candor are often lacking, Frank is in a class by himself when it comes to rewriting history in creative ways...No one contributed more to the policies behind the housing boom and bust, which led to the economic disaster we are now in, than Barney Frank. His powerful position on the House Committee on Financial Services gave him leverage to force through legislation and policies that pressured banks and other lenders to grant mortgage loans to people who would not qualify under the standards that had long prevailed, and had long made mortgage loans among the safest investments around.".

"If there is a single face of the financial crisis, it is probably Barney Frank, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s chief Congressional patron, who shouted down all warnings and resisted all efforts to bring those agencies under control."

"I believe that we, as the federal government, have probably done too little rather than too much to push them [the banks] to meet the goals of affordable housing...I would like to get Fannie and Freddie more deeply into helping low-income housing."

"Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people...In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.‘From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,’ said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ‘If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.’"

"There is no guarantee [of a Federal bailout]...there is no explicit guarantee, there is no implicit guarantee, there is no wink-and-nod guarantee."

"When a private citizen like Bernie Madoff commits fraud, he gets a long jail sentence. But when Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, and the well-connected (and now rich) Democrats who headed Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae commit fraud ─ on a far larger scale ─ they simply send the bill to the taxpayers. Or, rather, the taxpayers' children."

    Barney Frank is the most reprehensible and disgusting excuse for a human being that has ever been voted into office by a blind, ignorant, partisan, and bigoted electorate.

Norm Mack, Peterborough, dog@myfairpoint.net

* For the record, I don’t watch the assholes that infest evening television.─ O’Reilly, Schultz, Hannity, Maddow, O‘Donnell, Schieffer, Cooper, and the other bullshit artists who make money spewing claptrap about things of which they know less than nothing for an audience that is even more ignorant than they are. An exception to my boycott is Keith Olbermann whom I watch for a minute or two now and then (I don’t have the stomach for longer sojourns) to keep abreast of what American Nazis are up to.

*** Fannie and Freddie are short for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which in turn are nicknames for the Federal National Mortgage Association and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, respectively. Both are quasi governmental bodies that underpin the mortgage market and whose collapse in 2008 cost American taxpayers between $100 billion and $300 billion depending on which book-cooking federal agency you choose to believe. ($95 million of those tax dollars went to lucrative pay packages for the firms' top executives )

    On November 11, 2011 (one of the few dates in the 21st Century during which nobody predicted that the World would end) an article datelined Montclair, NJ, appeared in the Manchester Union Leader and web sites and newspapers across this great land.

    As the story goes, New Jersey Administrative Judge Ellen Bass scathingly denounced one Jennifer O’Brien, a first grade teacher in the Paterson, NJ, school system, for demonstrating "a complete lack of sensitivity to the world in which her students live."
    Her Honor (I’ve never understood why judges are endowed with the title "Honor" considering that most of them are arrogant, overpaid, gutless, doctrinaire drones) was outraged by a critique of her budding young scholars that Ms. O’Brien posted on her Facebook page last March.. "I’m not a teacher," she had written to her Facebook friends, "I’m a warden for future criminals."
    The news article went on to suggest that Jennifer’s pique may have been occasioned by some past pranks played on her by her youthful charges that included assault and theft.
    Extenuating circumstances or no, and despite her 13 years in the instruction business, the authorities (none of whom, I venture to hazard, had ever brushed shoulders with inner city denizens) determined that Ms. O’Brien was insufficiently sensitive to realize that inner city boys will be inner city boys and inner city girls will be inner city girls.
    Judge Bass (who is no relation to the fish) went on to recommend that Ms. O’Brien be booted from her tenured position for her extreme lack of sensitivity as well as for the high crime of telling the truth. Moreover, since Patterson is a "poor, urban New Jersey community with a high rate of violent crime" school officials, and, no doubt, the Honorable Bass, interpreted O’Brien’s quasi tweet as racially tinged.
    Oh My Goodness Gracious! How dreadfully insightful of these educators to realize that if someone refers to "future criminals" in a poor, urban New Jersey community with a high rate of violent crime she is actually employing code for (dare I utter the dread words) the African-American Community?
    How dare she!
    As though African-Americans are the ones clogging the courts and jails of America in numbers completely out of proportion to their share of the population when everyone knows it’s those lawless Buddhists and Hindus and Wall street bankers that are responsible for all that mugging and drug dealing and murder.
    Like how non-PC can a grade school teacher get!
    Oh gosh, I’m so shaken by Ms. O’Brien’s insensitivity and inappropriateness that I’m gonna have to load up on some beer and chill out for a few hours with the Giants-49ers and Pats-Jets games

* * *

    Well the fucking Giants once again managed to blow a game they should have won.
    Fortunately, Brady and the Pats mashed the Jets and their obese loudmouth of a coach, Rex Ryan, in the evening. So I guess it was a wash.
    Anyhow...back to New Jersey and such trivia as the erosion of the cerebral cortices of American men, women, and children by the brain-eating parasites of mainstream Liberalism and their judicial and media henchmen.

* * *

    In "1984," the book that broke the back of the Soviet Union, George Orwell described three Commandments that were emblazoned on the exterior of the Ministry of Truth:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

    These Commandments were the central slogans of the tyranny envisioned by Orwell, a dark world in which humanity was crushed beneath the suffocating weight of an all-powerful state led by the omnipotent, godlike dictator Big Brother.
    Paterson New Jersey’s hapless Jennifer O’Brien, like Orwell’s doomed hero Winston Smith, is in a 1984 of her own, as she is slowly crushed by the judicio-academic establishment that holds sway in this country.
    Her crime?
    She violated Liberalism’s most sacred Commandment:

TRUTH IS BIGOTRY

    If you are a teacher, a media figure, a politician, a preacher, or just an average nerd in a high-profile position you risk your career, your livelihood, your family’s well-being, and your physical safety should you dare speak Truth about an ever-growing catalogue of verboten subjects, among them race, sexuality, religion, and gender.
    It’s perfectly okay, according to the PC police, for a black man to smear an entire race as Jesse Jackson did...or for another Black, Al Sharpton, to foment a murderous race riot in Harlem or commit anti-white perjury concerning a lying slut named Tawana Brawley...or for a simpering faggot like Perez Hilton to blackball a naive Miss USA contestant because she was against gay marriage...or for a bigot like Obama’s beloved minister of hate, Jeremiah Wright, to preach "God damn America...or for a murderous lunatic like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be an honored guest of Columbia University, lecture the student body, and enjoy dinner with a select few privileged undergraduates.
    But let the President of Harvard University {Lawrence Summers) ask whether genetic differences might play a role in the preponderance of men over women in science, and a mass case of the vapors immediately afflicts the entire female faculty, followed by Summers’ forced resignation.
    Or let poor Jimmy the Greek muse that the preponderance of great black running backs in the NFL might be traceable to genetic selection dating back to slavery, and he is tarred, feathered, drummed out of the media, and; banished to the outer darkness for the rest of eternity.
    Or invite a conservative like Ann Coulter or a wishy-washy Republican like George Bush to speak at a college, and the university bureaucracy immediately morphs into tizzy mode followed either by a disinvite "based on security considerations" or else a paternalistic "naughty naughty" if a left-wing student sheep-mob riots on the orders of its sheepdog masters.

* * *

    In an article I posted several weeks ago, Tom Sowell wrote "Our schools are already too lacking in the basics of education to squander even more time on propaganda for politically correct causes that are in vogue."
    Tom, I love you. You’re one of the few islands of decency and sanity remaining in the world of intellect. But you’re wasting your breath with such advice.
    That ship has sailed.
    The Fascists are in control.
    The sad truth is that the population, the great mass of Americans if you will, does not understand that Fascism is not a matter of Left Wing or Right Wing, of Democrat or Republican.
    Mussolini and Stalin and Hitler and Castro and Peron and Mao were all cut from the same cloth.
    Fascism is a state of mind.
    Fascism has nothing to do with politics ─ with socialism, with conservatism, with communism, with anarchism, with nazism.

    And, today, in my beautiful country, the country in which I was so fortunate to be born, the Fascist Spirit, the spirit of subjugation and repression, grows ever stronger; the spirit of free thought ─ and of Truth itself ─ weaker and weaker.

Norm Mack, Peterborough, dog@myfairpoint.net